Monday, October 22, 2012

A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger

Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorce dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancee and her kids. The fiancee's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.

Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.

I must admit that Kody Keplinger had me hooked on this story very
quickly. If she hadn't, I would have closed the book after about 3
pages. My first instinct was to give up on this book almost immediately
because of the language and the tone of the story. The thing that kept
me turning pages was the premise of the story. Eighteen year old
Whitley Johnson wakes up in bed with a boy that she barely recognizes
and realizes that she has had sex with him while in a drunken stupor. I
was interested in finding out where this story was going and how it
would be resolved. Would Whitley end up pregnant, with a sexually
transmitted disease or in a stalking situation?? I must admit that I
didn't guess what actually happened. By the time the plot twist was
revealed, I was invested in Whitley Johnson and her troubled life and
had to see how her story ended.

I would not have wanted my daughter to be friends with Whitley
Johnson but the more I came to know her, the more empathy I had for
her. She was a girl who was looking for someone to give her guidance
and boundaries and most of all love as she moved into adulthood.
Unfortunately, her parents were too busy trying to get their own lives
on track to teach and train Whitley. No one had ever told Whitley that
she had to be in at a certain time, that drinking and drunkenness were
unacceptable, that she was a unique young woman who should have more
respect for herself than to have sex with numerous boys. Because of
this, she pushed harder and harder trying to find someone to tell her to
Stop! I found the story very compelling and was satisfied with the
ending.

The negative part of this review is the language issue which is my
pet peeve. I don't understand why it is necessary to flood a novel with profanity, especially the amount of
language contained here. I understand that the language is part of this
character's personality but the amount of it is just too excessive for me.